


Here I Am

by CopperCaravan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Ensemble - Freeform, Fenera Mahariel, Gen, Team as Family, Writing Exercise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 10:48:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5925679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Warden Mahariel vignette-assembled ensemble spanning from the beginning of Origins to the end of Awakening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here I Am

**Author's Note:**

> I needed a form exercise to make myself finish something so I came back to my trusty Warden Mahariel and the comfort of canon. The rules and structure of the exercise are described in the following link and my parameters were: ~100 words per section, no dialogue, and words selected from Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf (just because). Title's a pull from "Here I Am" by Bryan Adams, Hans Zimmer, and Gretchen Peters because music, childhood, and feelings.  
> http://secondhandsobriety.tumblr.com/post/138698728431/writing-exercise

Arrow

She sends them away with a flick of her wrist, granting them their lives even as images flash behind her eyes of men like them with knives in their hands. Half her ear gone and the phantom ache of that sawing grip never truly goes away but these cowards aren’t worth death by her hands, by his arrows. It will only bring more trouble, only give them the reason they’re always looking for, overturning stones and stumbling through the forests in search of the dreaded knife-eared savages. Danger sought out so they can prove they are far more dangerous.

...

 

Betrayed

She has never fallen to her knees in supplication, never begged with tears for love or luck or health. The silent gods tell her it has not been enough. The Keeper tells her there is no way to mend the hurt. The world has turned its back on her, devoured her heart without remorse. Broken, she turns away from her home and grieves more for those who cannot bear to lose her than she does for her own death. And it is coming. She feels it in the bend of her bones, the way her skin breaks like fragile glass in the light. The world has committed an unforgivable sin.

...

 

Courage

Maybe that’s the whole point of the joke. To spite the world that’s wronged them all. If the words had fallen from another’s lips, if she’d not been sent here, her skin burning and her insides melting and her eyes unable to focus just right, she’d have thought it funny. But as it is all she sees is a shem’len man, hardly a man at all in any sense, laughing at a darkness closing in on him too. Not today, not now, but if he tells a joke tomorrow, she will try to laugh with him.

...

 

Defend

It was days in a tent, sleeping through nightmares while the Keeper tried to cure her incurable sickness. Days more hiking through woods and hills and villages with the Blight boiling her alive on the way to Ostagar. Days _more_ in the Wilds, killing monsters and digging up magic flowers and following witches that speak in riddles. And finally, now, they’re at war, blood and bodies and death whirling all around them, and Alistair slings a shield between her and a darkspawn and grins. Blood—his or hers or something else’s—slides down his temple like sweat and he grins. Finally, now, she laughs.

...

 

Ever

There is a little, hastily-abandoned house outside Lothering. She is enchanted by it—by the three bedrooms and the scratches on the walls for heights and ages and dogs. She drags her fingers along pantries that stored food grown safely just outside the door and picks through clothes, all mended by hands like those back home but made of soft fabric, not meant for hunting or falling or running. But they did run, whoever they were. The Blight has chased off any semblance of security even for the shem’len. She thinks of her people. Where can they go?

...

 

Fair

Leliana shares her food. Their rations are meagre, the portions evenly distributed and hardly sustaining. Leliana passes her bit of rabbit to Alistair—she doesn’t much care for it anyway—and sneaks a bit of bread to the dog. It is kindness becoming less and less foreign to Mahariel, these few weeks spent among the shem’len. A gladly shared ration cannot be weighed against wandering and running and slavery and loss. It cannot be weighed even against the missing tip of her right ear, light though it is, wrapped like a trophy or tossed to a dog. But Leliana shares her food and Mahariel sees it.

...

 

Gold

None of it makes her any less Dalish and none of it makes her any less angry. The men are men, the women are women, the children are children but they are all, every one, _human_. And they look at her like a foreign creature, like a fairytale come to life, a frightful witch from the dark corners of the forest come to save them all—an unexpected miracle, sent by their Maker. And she is anything but that—an orphan, half a widow, dying in agony and nightmares. But she is not their Maker-sent and they reward her for their lives anyway.

...

 

Hills

She’s never had a dog before. Relied on halla and wolves and birds and deer and bears and boars and all manner of things, yes. For food and guidance and shelter and protection. But never for companionship. Never for a warm pile of snoring fur draped over her cold feet in the middle of the night. Never for slobbery comfort when the darkspawn’s dirge wakes her from her sleep, clammy and breathless. Never for solidarity when her grief for her family becomes too much to bear. And not for the first time (nor for the last), she is grateful for magic flowers and kennel masters and dogs.

...

 

In

The others follow her, their eyes rolling and their lips downturned. _An utter waste of time,_ they surely think. But she has been taken from her people by the Blight, stolen away by circumstance and tragic accident. And Sten can still go home, when this is all done, however it ends. All he needs is a sword and it is a small token, as far as she’s concerned, to help him go back. _Outside of Things_ is no place for a Dalish to be and, apparently, it is not for Qunari either.

...

 

Justice

 _This isn’t right._ That’s all she can think. Everything about this place is wrong—from the mortar between the foundation stones to the screaming horrors sinking teeth and claw into her back. These are not men; they are monsters. These are not monsters; they are men. And there is nothing to be done but to salvage the least of the horrible things, to save what little can be and to hope that none of hers ever find their way to a Circle—this or any other.

...

 

Known

They’re all sitting ‘round the fire now, roasting rabbit and carrots and laughing at Zevran’s jokes. She imagines them from far away, as though they are not close to her heart, as though she is nothing but Dalish and they are nothing but not. It simply doesn’t fit anymore. But she does—right in the middle there, between Alistair and Morrigan, with Zevran leaning against her knees and the dog stealing scraps off her plate. It does not take away from her, from who she is or where she comes from, and she will never forget everything her people have lost. But she belongs here too.

...

 

Lord

She takes everything he says for truth. Of course she does. To lie to kin is a greater offense than whatever you are trying to hide. But it had been not-quite-true. And that had been stranger to her than every strange thing she has seen. A Keeper who lies to his people. _Their people_ , she corrects. She is Dalish still; it cannot slip away so quick. But when she carries his body back to his clan and tells his First his terrible truth, she feels like she is Outside of Things and there is no way for her to come back in.

...

 

Marked

She watches him, _The Painted Elf._ She’d thought the tattoos a mockery at first, or perhaps a form of defiance, but they are something else. Something like vallaslin, but unwanted—a way for his people to claim him though he seems not to want such a thing. There’s no getting rid of them now; even if he runs, they won’t fade. But she thinks that perhaps it is a good thing, to always know what one has overcome. Like the metal melted into his belt or the mangled remains of her ear. He can belong with her, if he wants.

...

 

Night-Shadows

There has never been a pain like this one. Not the Blight or the death or the scars so far, and nothing to come will ever compare. She does what she must, what he begs for—she owes him so much more but she can give him nothing else. And then she buries him, alone, sweat dripping down her back and arms and stinging in her eyes; she waves them away when they try to help and only digs deeper and deeper. This tree will grow so far from home, from any home they’ve ever shared. The world sinned against her but now she is worse. It cannot be undone.

...

 

One

All those years Morrigan spent alone, or with her mother, or passing quickly by another who paid no mind to her. And yet now she has a friend—truly—and in a place she never thought to even look. The solitary witch may be one of hundreds—the Witches of the Wilds, so oft spoken of in legend—or she may be one of one—and a legend all her own—but however many daughters Flemeth has, however many jailors circle her in waiting, Morrigan is not alone anymore. Now, she has a sister.

...

 

Party

Dark. Deep. Roads. Words that are true, but shallow. The Deep Roads are everything she ever feared about death and everything she’s learned to fear about the Blight. And yet, she is secure, as much as she can be. She is safe and she is certain and she is still alive. Loyal. True. Comrades. Words that are true, but shallow. These people are everything she ever knew about what made a clan and everything she’s learned about what makes a family, strung together with circumstances and securely knotted with love. And yet she is grieving, because she can belong to two families, but she cannot be with both.

...

 

Quickly

A Warrior, then a Drunk, then a Widower. Now a Surfacer. His decision is immediate and unexpected and announced with as much pride as the Shaperate had announced the new King. Oghren will become an outcast among his people, an exile. He will be, forever, _Outside of Things._ She has stolen him away, but he has chosen to go and she never even asked. How many of them can still go back? How many of them still have places to go back to? She is _Outside of Things_. And New Things cannot replace Old Things, but they are trying so hard to move into her heart.

...

 

Rare

She wonders who she is now. She wonders if she is the same person she would have been if the year had passed while she slept in a heap of warm Dalish bodies and braided flowers into Junar’s hair. Not everything, of course, not the Blight or the weariness or the scars. But... surely something. Not the way her dog sleeps on top of her feet or the way Leliana sings by the fire. But something. Not the way Alistair tickles her ribs or Zevran kisses her knuckles, but something. Not Morrigan’s humour or Sten’s loyalty or Oghren’s promises. But something. But perhaps not.

...

 

Shield

She has had time. Long enough to understand that perhaps Ostagar was never about what Alistair thinks it was about. But that matters so little in the face of an alienage decimated by famine and plague and slavery and noble savagery. So she throws herself in front of these people who are and aren’t hers, covers them from all the evil she can take into her own body. And just as she does, so does Alistair. So do Zevran and Morrigan and Sten. They cover her from all they can manage, these people who are and aren’t hers.

...

 

Time

Once and then again, Alistair thanks her. He’d told her, after a while, of his life as a Warden. And he’d told her, after a while longer, of his life as an almost-Templar. Then, a while once more, he’d told her of dog-kennels and warmth drawn from piles of prickling hay in horses’ stables outside the Arl’s Castle in Redcliffe. And then, finally, he’d told her of his father, of a crown that he’d never wanted and that had never wanted him. So once more and more and more, he thanks her, for making Anora Queen and granting him his own life, to make what he can of what’s left.

...

 

Urgent

They are going to die. And perhaps she knew all along. She thinks she must have, to have left her life and loves behind so easy (so hard as it was, even still). But she can’t look at these people as anything but her people and she doesn’t want to leave people behind again. She is Outside of Things but she fits—right there, between them, Alistair on one side, Morrigan on the other, Zevran resting against her knees. And as she’d grieved for those who lost her first, she grieves for those who lose her now. She doesn’t want to go.

...

 

Victory

More than one thing is won atop the tower, more than one thing saved. The world, of course, there is that. But she’s come to care little for such a trifling thing. Somewhere out there, far, far away, her clan is sleeping, all warm and heaped together by their fires, curled in blankets made of Halla’s wool and at least one of them is thinking of her. And here, lying busted and bleeding and so very much alive, are Alistair and Zevran and Sten. It’s not the world she cares for, but her world—so strange and separate and unexpected as it has become. And she is alive to see it grow.

...

 

Woman

Anora’s called her back. But _back_ implies she has returned from whence she came and she never came from a palace in a city, the service of a queen. She came from the blood of a Keeper two decades dead and a woman who fled the space his loss left. From aravels and hunting and days of growling, empty bellies. From fear and fierce defiance of it, from love and the same nurturing spirit that coaxes seedlings from soil. Though she and the Queen have little in common, they share a harsh truth between them: woman. One rumoured barren and one certainly so. And they’ve neither of them nothing to go _back_ to but duty.

...

 

Expected (X)

It’s almost laughable—how hard she fought to stop the Blight and the darkspawn don’t seem to realize. More than that, though, is how hard she fought to stay alive, to stay with her people (whatever that means nowadays) and they aren’t here with her. One clan long gone and the second gone too and she’s left _Outside of Things_ again and she can’t take much more. She must spread herself between them all, thin and fragile as mist in early morning. _Where have you gone? Where have I?_ And now, of all things, she owns shem’len land. 

...

 

Yore

She’d never been sure if she believed in Arlathan. Even as a child, she thought it was perhaps just a side effect of being old: hahrens wishing for olden days as consolation for all they’d never have. She knows it now—the truth of it never mattered at all. Oghren sits on her left, and Anders on her right, and Nathaniel leans against her knees. Another people who are and aren’t hers and she is both Outside and Inside so many things. She was Dalish first and Ferelden second and then a Warden and a Hero and a Commander. She doesn’t long for Arlathan quite the way Hahren Paivel does. She longs for something else.

...

 

Unfolding (Z)

She doesn’t know the secret—whether it is _comfort_ or _contentment_ or _love._ There is something that draws her Inside Things and pulls her Outside the Things she had before. She will never be who she was, never be who she was intended to be, whoever had such intent for her. And she wonders about that woman less and less. There is a dagger at her hip and a bow at her back and a shem’len man at her side who is hers. She is her people and he is her people and she’s yet to learn a tongue that knows the word for that.


End file.
